


Learning to Knock

by DestielsDestiny



Series: How Magnus Bane Found a Family [4]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: BAMF Alec Lightwood, BAMF Magnus Bane, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Childhood Trauma, Domestic Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Episode Related, Family Feels, Film References, Found Family Feels, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jace Wayland Being an Idiot, Jace Wayland is a Herondale, M/M, Maryse Lightwood Being An Asshole, POV Alec Lightwood, POV Jace Wayland, POV Magnus Bane, Parabatai Feels, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Alec Lightwood, Sad Alec, Supportive Magnus Bane, Sweet Magnus, hurt jace, references to will herondale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 07:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9646250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: How three misfits learned to have a home, in three loosely connected scenes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AN: First scene is set shortly after 2x07, second sometime before 2x08, and the third at some point in the future, when Sebastian’s identity has been revealed and people know Jace is a Herondale.

It’s not that bad, it’s worse

It takes less time that Magnus thought it would, for Alec to blow up at his parabatai. Jace has been living in Magnus’ second spare bedroom for nearly two weeks by that point, and aside from his startling inability to determine what makes a suitable breakfast, the startled look of wonder on his face when Magnus presented him with a bed with actual sheets and colours and pillows, plural, and the occasional thump on Friday nights, the Nephilim has proven to be a surprisingly equitable house guest. Mostly because he makes it very easy for Magnus to ignore the fact he’s there at all. 

Alec, by contrast, seems unable to forget it. And while Magnus fully understands it, considering how hard they worked to bring Jace home, to get him back, while he knows the heated words and talk to abandonment and turning his back on his family is Alec trying desperately to connect, to understand, to just get Jace to stop being a frat boy for five seconds and talk to his parabatai, he can’t help the wince every time Alec blows up at Jace. The frown that mars his forehead at every glare and shuttered glance bouncing between the two brothers. 

Because while Magnus might not see Jace much, and thinks about him less thank you very much, he sees enough to know that what he shows Alec, the devil may care grin and the endless parade of pretty girls, that might not be Jace. He sees enough to know that whatever broken remains shut themselves inside Jace’s room when Alec leaves and go silent enough to be easily ignorable, to be invisible, that isn’t Jace either. 

Alec is over more than he used to be, which is a definite plus to having a shadowhunter who isn’t his boyfriend under his roof, but sometimes, it just makes things more complicated. 

All things considered, Magnus is very surprised that is takes two whole weeks before Alec finally has enough, before Jace slipping into the kitchen shirtless while they are in the middle of a rather intense make-out session on the couch is finally one straw too many for his hurting and confused parabatai. 

Alec breaks the kissing off quickly enough that Magnus sways slightly in his seat when his support is suddenly gone, pissed off and striding halfway across the loft before Magnus so much as completely lowers his hands to his lap. Jace pauses with his hand an inch from Magnus’ fridge handle. Being a warlock doesn’t mean he doesn’t use mundane cold storage, and the concept of orange juice had been one Jace had become rather taken with since moving in. Magnus rolled his eyes at the time, but the look of naked wonder on the boy’s face still lingers in the back of his mind. It makes it rather impossible to begrudge Jace the oranges. 

Alec was not there for the orange juice discovery, and thus his reaction to Jace helping himself to Magnus’ fridge is rather different. Magnus personally thinks all of this would be much simpler if Alec simply moved in with them. 

Alec doesn’t actually touch Jace, but it’s a near thing. “Can’t you at least put a shirt on Jace?” It should be an absurd statement, it should be funny. Magnus just manages to supress his wince at Jace’s answering smirk. 

“Why? See something you like Alec?” Magnus barely resists the urge to smack Jace’s mouth at that rather uncalled for jab, but Alec gives at good as he gets. 

“What would I find attractive about someone who walks out on their family when things get tough?” Magnus doesn’t bother to hide his wince this time. 

Jace looks like a cup of off-curdled milk. “When things get tough? Things are a little more than tough Alec!” Remarkably, neither of them have moved, Jace poised half towards the fridge, bare chest heaving, Alec mussed, shirt half undone, barely two inches from his brother. 

All in all, they look rather hot Magnus can’t help but note absently. 

“How would I know what huh? How would I know what things are like when you won’t talk to me? What is it Jace? So Aldertree demoted you, so what?” Alec’s voice is starting to crack, his attempts to get Jace to talk old, familiar patterns to all those present by this fortnight mark. 

Jace’s face is a terrible thing to behold in that moment, a storm caught somewhere between anger and anguish. Magnus suddenly feels like an intruder in his own living space. 

Jace’s voice is almost cruelly amused. “Really Alec? You honestly think this is about Aldertree putting me on grunt duty? Do I seem that arrogant and petty to you?” There is enough real question in that question to break Alec’s heart. Magnus doesn’t have to share a soul with him to know that, not when it’s painted all over his face. 

Alec doesn’t have time to reply, just as Magnus doesn’t have time to do more than rise abruptly and take an aborted step closer to the pair when Jace’s hand suddenly darts up, his stele grasped between shaking fingers, his palm slapping against his own skin with a resounding crack. 

The rune activates faster than the glamour falls, and it takes a moment for the glow to dissipate enough for Magnus to notice what Jace was hiding. 

Jace’s voice is low, shaking, broken, cockiness washed away by adrenaline and grief. “I tried to kill us Alec. I couldn’t face the reality of what kind of monster I am, so I took the soul sword and tried to slit my own throat. And I couldn’t even get that right.” The shake turns into a quiver. “I saved Aldertree instead of going after the sword, and I can’t even tell if I did it because I cared about someone dying, or I was to cowardly to face my father again.” It drops too a whisper. 

“I’m in love with my own sister, I couldn’t swear loyalty to the clave, and I tried to kill my own parabatai without even having the decency to talk to him first. That’s what’s so bad Alec, that’s what’s my problem. There you go.” Magnus doesn’t know what his face looks like in that moment, but he suspects it mirrors the horror, the pain, the grief displayed on Alec’s. 

Jace’s lips twist cruelly. “Is that bad enough for you Alec?” Magnus feels something choke in his throat. Alec still hasn’t moved, barely seems to be breathing. 

Slowly, his hand raises towards the diagonal scar standing out amongst Jace’s ruins, the cold burn seared in a slash across nearly half his throat. Alec’s fingers don’t quite connect, Jace’s flinch shattering the last semblance of control on his parabatai’s face. 

Magnus feels like he’s watching a train wreck in slow motion. Alec’s hand drops. His face smooths. 

“Really Jace?” The tone is somehow, impossible, actually wry. “That’s your definition of bad? Nobody even died. This barely rates a poor for our lives.” It should sound dismissive, discounting. It should be the exactly wrong thing to say. Magnus can tell it kills Alec to say it. 

Like a ray of sunlight wafting through a tiny window in a hurricane, a smile slowly creeps across Jace’s face. It keeps brightening until it makes it to a laugh. The laughter has reached the point of tears before Jace allows Alec to slip his arms around his bare shoulders, both of them shuddering with silent sobs. But for the first time in two weeks, Jace looks like something that might one day be himself again. 

Across the room, Magnus slips quietly through a side door to reach the fridge the long way. Orange Juice sounds rather good right about now, so he might as well get some for everyone. 

As he opens the door, the sobs become audible. Inexplicably, Magnus finds himself grinning at the depths of his fridge like a loon. 

Alec has never ceased to amaze him. He hopes, for all their sakes, that that never changes. 

00

Not her son

The letter arrives on a Wednesday. Alec isn’t even sure how Maryse knew the correct address, but nonetheless, there it is, innocuous and deadly, addressed ominously to “Jonathan C. Morgenstern.” That should have been a hint. 

They were making breakfast, Jace attempting to catch the kitchen on fire by flinging pancake squares in the air at odd moments, Magnus throwing magic around like a divergently coloured flame war. Alec was mostly attempting to keep from laughing, not really looking at the mail that he’s just brought in. 

He never finds out what his mother used to produce the effect, and it takes ten years and two little kids to appreciate the irony of what happens next, but a strange howling fills the kitchen just as Jace lands his first successful pancake flip, sizzling oil mingling with his pleased half-shout. 

Maryse’s stringent tone is far below a yell, but it cuts right through everything else. 

Alec doesn’t remember properly what the letter said, what hurtful and hateful words spilled out of the paper in their-his-her voice. He suspects things like cancer and traitor and hidden viper were in there, that no son of mine an unwelcome and banished made it in. 

He does remember the worst, mostly because the oil burn Jace gets on his face from dropping the pan on the floor never fully fades, always the faintest echo of a shadow painted across his cheekbone, a permanent reminder of the fickleness of parental love in the shadowworld, a constant remembrance of the one betrayal he knows his brother didn’t see coming, for all that he probably should have been able to predict it perfectly. 

“Not fit to be my son’s parabatai.” Compared to some of the other things Magnus will later relate was in there, his eyes licked by blue flames, his mouth set in a grim line, that sentence shouldn’t even have been of note. Except is was. Especially now. 

Unlike those books he will one day read aloud a dozen times over, the letter doesn’t conveniently go up in smoke. Magnus is too busy attempt to get Jace to open his eye to determine if the oil splashed more than just his cheek, so Alec quietly sits at the table and starts shredding. 

The pile beneath is fingers is nearly dust when gentle hands still his own. Alec looks up, sees Jace with the shadow scar for the first time. His throat closes somewhat at the hopeful smile in those eyes. 

“Come on man. Magnus said I can pick out a colour for my room!” Alec lets himself be pulled into the hall, Jace looking as young as Max for a moment. 

Behind them, a snap of jewelled fingers echoes in the air, blue flames licking hungrily at a pile of scattered scraps of paper and ink and magic. 

They end up spending the rest of the day painting. Magnus complains the entire time. Jace flicks paint in the warlock’s hair, and gets showered in glitter for his trouble. Alec can’t stop grinning the entire time. 

00

Boy with no name

“Why do you always call me Jace?” Magnus pauses in his perusal of what is apparently a very rare and very sacred text in ancient Sanskrit, that somehow holds the secrets to unlocking their latest case. Jace feels his face heat, backpedaling.   
“I mean, why Jace? Why not Jonathan? You always call people by their full names, or their nicknames. You call Clary Biscuit, you’re the only person I know who calls Max Maxwell.” There is no way he can’t make what he adds sound at least a bit whiny. “How come I don’t get a nickname?” 

Magnus keeps staring at the Sanskrit. “Jace, you have to remember that I have lived for centuries. I have encountered individuals with every name imaginable. I can tell when a name suits someone, and when a name doesn’t. Jace suits you. Anything else doesn’t.”

It’s a polished answer if ever he heard one, and Jace feels his eyes prickle. “So, in other words, you always knew there was something wrong with me. The boy who doesn’t even know his own name, who was never even given-“ To his horror, tears start to spill over Jace’s scrunched up eyes, prompting him to shift from his position holding the document steady for Magnus, moving back abruptly to keep the salt away from the ancient paper. 

Something warm and licking and blue is suddenly wrapped around his face, melting his tears away like a whispered caress. Jace feels more begin to build. 

Magnus’ hands play aimlessly over the surface of the table. He makes no move to touch Jace. 

“Jace…it’s no secret I didn’t like you at first. You were loud and annoying and far too pretty for my tastes. You were everything I had spent centuries avoiding in a Shadowhunter.” Jace forces himself to look at Magnus, to meet his frank gaze. 

He finds the strength to keep holding that gaze somewhere in those glamoured eyes. “But that avoidance wasn’t because of annoyance, or even indifference.” The pause is long enough to make Jace venture a prompt. “What was it from then? Hatred?” He’s only half joking. He is the son of the author of the uprising afterall. He knows his father personally slaughtered people Magnus had known, had cared about, for decades, even centuries. He would certainly hate him, if he was in Magnus’ shoes. 

Magnus chuckled drily, casting his hand carelessly towards the paper, which nearly closed on Jace’s fingertips, it folded up so fast. 

“No Jace. It was fear.” Jace stared at his suddenly empty hands. Magnus sighed, moving inevitably towards his drinks table. 

Glasses clinked for a moment. Jace still didn’t look up. “A long time ago, I was friends with a warlock called Tess. We had a mutual friend, a shadowhunter boy with the bluest eyes.” Jace stares at Magnus’ back, transfixed by the tone as much as the words. 

Magnus turned back around slowly, one hand extended with a cocktail glass full of something suspiciously orange and thick. Jace takes a hesitant step forward, lets his hand close around the stem, just below Magnus’ ringed digits. 

Magnus doesn’t let go of the glass. He meets Jace’s gaze head on. “That boy’s name was Will Herondale. And try as I might, you never quite stop reminding me of him.” 

Jace is saved from forming a response to that revelation by Alec slipping into the room. “Come on Jace, Magnus, it’s eight o’clock.” Alec slows at the sight before him, but his excitement is as contagious as it is a perfect distraction. 

“Quite right darling, we just finished up in here anyway.” They share a chaste kiss as Jace claims a firmer grip on his drink, trailing the hand caressing newlyweds towards the couch. 

As the flashy credits of something called X-2 roll, steel doors and eye scanners cycling by, Jace takes a careful sip of his orange something. And as the sweet tang hits his lips, he lets himself relax back against the cushions, his shoulders just brushing Alec and Magnus’ on either side of him. 

Jace was a boy born without a name. But that doesn’t have to mean he doesn’t know who he is. 

00

Jace knocks on the door to the loft five days after Alec marries Magnus. He opens the door to find his parabatai standing on the other side holding what appears to be a folding mattress under one arm, and a several galleon container of orange juice under the other. 

Jace has the grace to look sheepish, for all of five seconds. “I missed you man. It was too quiet at the Institute.” He impossibly hikes the barrel of refreshments higher. “I brought juice.” 

Alec feels his lips twitch. Magnus saves him from responding however, sweeping up to Alec’s side with a casual arm dropped around his shoulders, his free hand throwing something through the air towards Jace’s head. 

Jace drops the juice to catch it, the enormous jug hovering merrily in a haze of blue fire. The key blinks silver in Jace’s palm. 

“Since you seem to have some much trouble knocking, you might as well has your own key.” He throws the last bombshell over his shoulder, the door swinging wide enough for Jace plus his portable mattress. “We still have beds here Jason.” 

Jace gapes. Alec cocks his head, considering. Jason. The boy born with incredible and dangerous abilities who was turned into an experiment by his own father, raised to the ultimate weapon. They have all watched X-men at least a dozen times in the past few years. 

Alec watches his parabatai watch Magnus’ retreating back, his gaze switching between the small key to the door to Magnus and back. 

Alec lets himself grin. He pulls the door wide, and welcomes his brother home.


End file.
